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CHAPTER 17

Will surveys the cafeteria, every other person in a tiara or eye-patch or witch’s hat. It is abuzz with laughter and nudging elbows and people jumping out of their seats to get the spectacular special, pumpkin pie, ordered, specialty-made, not cooked in the behemoth of an oven in the school kitchens.

“It’s funny,” he says, swirling his fry in his ketchup. “Everyone’s always like “oh, Halloween’s the one day of the year when you pretend you’re someone else!’ But really, when you think about it, it’s not that different from the rest of the year.”

I shrug, my bare shoulders touching the long, dangly turquoise earrings of my (authentic) gypsy costume: long, rose-colored skirt with diamond shaped designs, a handkerchief hem that floats gracefully, like a dream, when I spin to do a 360, white peasant blouse bunched below the shoulder, and a white bandanna off-set on my dark hair.
“We are what we pretend to be,” I say easily, pretty sure I’m quoting someone.

Harper, sitting next to him, mutters, “You have no idea.”

Wait. What?

Will puts a cautionary hand on her arm. Oh, by the way, they’re not going out, despite all the reasons they should. Harper told me it’s because they don’t want their friendship to end. So instead they’re both “friends” who are totally into each other. Which, you know, makes SO much sense…

Her head snaps up.

“You’re really smart, you know that, right?”

Okay, I can tell she’s just doing this to distract me, but nevertheless it works. I’m baffled at this randomness.

“Well so are YOU…you get all A’s…

“Yeah,” she says dismissively, “And so do you. But, it’s like…how to explain it…you’re smarter than school. You’re bigger than these walls.”

I blink, feeling like my life is a low-budget movie.

“It’s hard to explain,” Will fills in, defending her. “But I do get what she’s saying. I’ve thought the same thing ever since I started to get to know you.”

“Riiight. You know you guys aren’t making any sense at all. Is this like, a test, or something?”

Harper sighs. “And yet…so totally clueless.”

“Thanks,” I reply, feeling a bitter smirk twisting my mouth.

“So…” says Wills, punctuating the following silence. “A bunch of us were going to go trick-or-treating, just to get the free candy, you know. If we’re charming enough, the older folks will give it to you, only a few stingy people will slam the doors and be all ‘you damn kids aren’t kids’, which is contradictory, but whatever.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “What do you mean by ‘a bunch of us’?”

“Well…” He squirms in his seat.

“Oh no,” Harper, not me, says, also witness to this. “Will. Honestly. Don’t start this again.”

“But he wants to see you!” he bursts out, flinging a fry that whizzes past my head. “Damn it! He wants to, okay?! You guys don’t realize that it’s not like I’m not tired of hearing it too. Hell, I probably hear it more than you do! Every freaking day, ‘she won’t talk to me, she won’t talk to me, aaah, Will?! What am I going to do?!’ Don’t you get that it’s hard for me, too?”

Stunned, I look at Harper, the same thread between us: no, we hadn’t. I’d been too busy thinking about myself, and Harper had been dragged down with me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, shame-facedly, to my half-eaten slice of pie.

“Me too,” Harper seconds, her pain at causing him pain fresher than mine.

Something happens between them, some opening rift. Nothing physical, but like a stir in the air, one of those tangible things tasted but not touched. They moved infinitesimally closer, and my heart rips at the edges at watching their two selves convalesce and meld into one, because I don’t think I’ll have that ever again. Not with all that’s happened.

But I push it away. I’ve learned to push away, breathing it out so it doesn’t fill me with lead; hold me down until every visible misgiving of mine shows. Each time I shove, it gets a little easier, this subtle superpower of mine.

“And this morning…this morning it was bad. ‘My God. She looks- beautiful. Doesn’t she, Will?’” Will mimics his voice in falsetto, and even though I’m certainly not on speaking terms with Raphael, I wince.

“And I’m like, ‘Yeah. She does.’ So I take out the Noel sheet music, hoping he’ll get the hint, but no. NO. ‘Well, not that she doesn’t. Every day. Maybe if she wasn’t, it be easier, but looking at her…knowing I can’t have her…’ So I’m all ‘Yeah I get the point, she’s hot. But Carey’s gonna be here any second, so why don’t you just stop babbling.’”

“’HOT?!” he imitates in such an indignant tone, even Harper cringes, “ ‘My God, how can you say that? She is BEYOND hot. She is…she is…there’s no words. Wait…YOU don’t like her…do you?’” At this point, he lowers his voice, in an unbelievably guilty dissonance, so like Raphael when he came to apologize, so fragile and volatile…I can clearly see the two of them talking this morning in my head, the lips moving that I didn’t have the heart to read…

“‘No. NO. I do not…Jesus. Why would you accuse me of that?’ ‘I’m sorry. But you have to agree- ’ ‘Yeah, dude, I know, she’s something else, but you really need to get over her.’ ‘I KNOW. Okay, Will? Of course I know that. It’s just…’ ‘PLEASE, Ray! Shut UP!’ End scene. I mean, honestly, guys. It’s bad.”

What happened to my control? I’m shaking, shivering, practically, like I’m standing outside on the frosted grass without a coat. In my dream, naked in the snow, and everyone slides away. No one can save me and I can’t save myself because I am so numb. So cold.

“I am sorry,” I whisper, and the fact that I’m uncharacteristically speaking softly is enough to make them both listen intently, concern drawn tight on their faces. “But…you don’t know how it happened…you don’t know…I’m sorry…I’m ruining your…you should just go out…I’m sorry I darken everything…I’ve tried not to…um…I have to-“

I don’t bother to finish my rambling, my throat tight and sharp on glass, but I can’t cry. I’m too cold to cry. I am raindrops sliding down a car window, I am the light blue flickering flame, I am a frozen flower, I am the wind caressing your cheek, I am the song you that imprints itself on your mind, but I am not happy, and I cannot. Cry. All I’ve ever wanted was to be a person, and I can’t do that. I can’t do that since I’m lost, and I can’t do that since I carry another inside me.

I run, because that’s all I know how to do. Not to the ladies’ or the roof, where Harper will know to find me. I run and I am so glad there are twenty minutes left and that Central Falls High has an open lunch, so glad that today is Halloween and that I’ve at least had practice masquerading.

***

My white slippers are clutched tightly in my hands, my bare feet freezing and feeling each little poke of the bark in this public playground. There are no kids, I guess, because it’s still school. An old woman sits on one of the benches, knitting.

I pick a swing and plop down, then proceed to pump my legs up and down, seriously doubting that Old Lady will really care about seeing my black lace panties.
I remember that I used to think that if I went high enough, my feet would touch the sky and I could jump of the swing, jump into the expanse like a rabbit in a cozy burrow.

My feet do seem to graze the grayness but I know I can’t leap my head and rest there. I would be all “I wish”, but I don’t even do that anymore. What’s the point?

“Cross your legs, dearie,” calls Old Lady, not even looking up from her knitting.

This makes me laugh, a deep laugh pulled from the well inside me, and my throat is finally not glass, but blissfully normal. I leap off the swing with my arms outstretched. My wings only carry me a few feet from the swing, and I come face to face with Granny.

Her hair, too, is tucked in a bandanna, vanilla yogurt hair curling out in wisps. Her face is a map of lines, showing a story untold. When she looks up at me, her eyes are a startling blue, laid down by heavy, wrinkled lids.
“Do you ever want to be a kid again?” I ask her, kicking my feet a little in the bark.

She smiles, and I see there in that smile a thousand suns. It looks so familiar, and I realize that was how I used to smile.

When was the last time I did?

“All the time.”

I shrug and nod, like I knew this already, which I guess I did. I just wanted to confirm it.

“Do you ever…not?”

“All the time.”

Inexplicably, I start shaking again, voices echoing: “Your words, Nadya, are also pretty damn loud”… “You have no idea”… “Bigger than these walls”… “Looking at her, knowing I can’t have her”… “You make it awfully hard to love you, sometimes”… “You’re a brave, exceptional girl, Nadya, and if you don’t know it yet, you’re an idiot.”… “It is with God that I found you”… “My daughter is the gutsiest gal there ever was!”…

All pieces to a path, but I have no idea where it leads to, what it means. Does taking the road less traveled automatically mean coming up with a dead end?

“What’s wrong, child?”

“I’m scared. My friends…I don’t know when I’ll be able to be with them. I don’t know if I matter enough to them to stay. “

I don’t know why she understands me without us going through the usual rote formalities of “How are you?” “Oh, I’m good.” “Good,” then uncomfortable silence.

“Listen to your heart,” she says simply, wisely. “The people that matter most to you will be there for you. If you can’t see them, lean in closer.”

I wait a beat, then ask, “What are you knitting?”

She laughs, needles clacking together.

“Oh, who knows? I think it matters more that I am than what I’ll end up with, don’t you?”

***

Spinning my lock to get to my binder, a hot breath touches my neck.

“I saw it.”

I whirl around. Meg stands behind me, hands crossed tightly over her chest, her Choir Girls behind her, along with a retinue of observers, peeking in, wanting to watch the hunt. Wanting to see me, the saucy, temperamental, mysterious holds-her-head-high girl, go down like a deer.

“Saw what?”

“My Mom is a secretary at the hospital,” she says more loudly, projecting her voice, announcing it in a game-show voice.

“Your PREGNANT,” she yells, an evil gleam in her eye.

“Pregnant?” sneers Melanie. “God. What a whore.”

Everyone snickers, the guys especially. One, who sits behind me in Science- Peter, I think, who’s always asking me for help on the vocab., saying thank you every time- says, “Woah. Who’s the father?”

“Raphael, of course,” Jen twitters, hands under her chin, steeple-style.

“What a guy! How’d he manage to get into the ice queen bitch’s pants?!” exclaims Heath, grinning.

Wolf-whistles emerge. Bile rises in my throat.

“Guess you’re not so cold now, huh?” taunts one of his friends, a tall guy with a shock of red hair and bulging biceps. “Why don’t you show us some of what you showed him?” He saunters towards me and snaps the back of my bra. It stings, but my eyes sting more.

“Ow-ow- OOOWW!!” yell the guys, the girls laughing, as he gropes one of my boobs, then steps away, like it was nothing at all.

“Why are you doing this?” I hear my voice ask. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Ooooh, does the slut have a question?” Jen simpers.

That is the final blow.

Arms wrap around me, and I close my eyes. I will kick if I have to, I will fight as hard as I fought with Alex before someone, anyone, a teacher, notices. I will fight to the death.

“Get the hell away from her,” commands Raphael, with all the spirit of an avenging angel.

“Wooa-oh, Daddy-oh!”

It’s the redhead.

“Yeah, I can tell what you see in her. I felt them. The chick’s chest is HUGE. But, I mean, knocking her up? Bad move, bro.”

The arms release me, but I am still safe.

Raphael throws the first punch.

***

I dab his eye with my dampened bandanna as we wait outside the principals’ office.

“You know, I CAN take care of myself,” I inform him, not really indignantly, more matter-of-factly.

“I know. But…you do it all the time. I thought I would give you a break. Just for once.”

He traces my face, from my forehead to my chin, in awe.

A part of me wants to close my eyes, let him in. But I nudge it expertly to the side, remembering what’s best for my baby, and what’s best for me.

“Raphael…stop. I don’t need a boyfriend.”

Sadly, he takes heed, retracting his fingers and curling them up into a fist, setting them gently on his lap.

“I can do that. I’ll be whatever you need me to be. I’ll be your friend, whatever.”

“No, it’s not even that…though you can be my friend…it’s more that I just want you to be THERE.”

“I will be.”

I nod cautiously.

“I hope so. Don’t make me regret giving you a second chance.”

With that, I continue to dab, now at the split above his lip.

“Nadya?”

“Yeah?”

“I think the reason I was most angry that they hurt you…was because I knew that I had, too.”

I choose my words carefully, pulling them out so I can get to the core of my meaning and not muddy it up with incompetence, without a trace of doubt.

“I think…that our friends hurt us more than our enemies.”

“I think…that you’re amazing.”

“I think…that we should stop saying what we think and shut up.”

And we do, letting silence show one of its many sides and wrap a warm blanket of ease and comfort around us.

Description
CHAPTER 17

Will surveys the cafeteria, every other person in a tiara or eye-patch or witch’s hat. It is abuzz with laughter and nudging elbows and people jumping out of their seats to get the spectacular special, pumpkin pie, ordered, specialty-made, not cooked in the behemoth of an oven in the school kitchens.

“It’s funny,” he says, swirling his fry in his ketchup. “Everyone’s always like “oh, Halloween’s the one day of the year when you pretend you’re someone else!’ But really, when you think about it, it’s not that different from the rest of the year.”

I shrug, my bare shoulders touching the long, dangly turquoise earrings of my (authentic) gypsy costume: long, rose-colored skirt with diamond shaped designs, a handkerchief hem that floats gracefully, like a dream, when I spin to do a 360, white peasant blouse bunched below the shoulder, and a white bandanna off-set on my dark hair.
“We are what we pretend to be,” I say easily, pretty sure I’m quoting someone.

Harper, sitting next to him, mutters, “You have no idea.”

Wait. What?

Will puts a cautionary hand on her arm. Oh, by the way, they’re not going out, despite all the reasons they should. Harper told me it’s because they don’t want their friendship to end. So instead they’re both “friends” who are totally into each other. Which, you know, makes SO much sense…

Her head snaps up.

“You’re really smart, you know that, right?”

Okay, I can tell she’s just doing this to distract me, but nevertheless it works. I’m baffled at this randomness.

“Well so are YOU…you get all A’s…

“Yeah,” she says dismissively, “And so do you. But, it’s like…how to explain it…you’re smarter than school. You’re bigger than these walls.”

I blink, feeling like my life is a low-budget movie.

“It’s hard to explain,” Will fills in, defending her. “But I do get what she’s saying. I’ve thought the same thing ever since I started to get to know you.”

“Riiight. You know you guys aren’t making any sense at all. Is this like, a test, or something?”

Harper sighs. “And yet…so totally clueless.”

“Thanks,” I reply, feeling a bitter smirk twisting my mouth.

“So…” says Wills, punctuating the following silence. “A bunch of us were going to go trick-or-treating, just to get the free candy, you know. If we’re charming enough, the older folks will give it to you, only a few stingy people will slam the doors and be all ‘you damn kids aren’t kids’, which is contradictory, but whatever.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “What do you mean by ‘a bunch of us’?”

“Well…” He squirms in his seat.

“Oh no,” Harper, not me, says, also witness to this. “Will. Honestly. Don’t start this again.”

“But he wants to see you!” he bursts out, flinging a fry that whizzes past my head. “Damn it! He wants to, okay?! You guys don’t realize that it’s not like I’m not tired of hearing it too. Hell, I probably hear it more than you do! Every freaking day, ‘she won’t talk to me, she won’t talk to me, aaah, Will?! What am I going to do?!’ Don’t you get that it’s hard for me, too?”

Stunned, I look at Harper, the same thread between us: no, we hadn’t. I’d been too busy thinking about myself, and Harper had been dragged down with me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, shame-facedly, to my half-eaten slice of pie.

“Me too,” Harper seconds, her pain at causing him pain fresher than mine.

Something happens between them, some opening rift. Nothing physical, but like a stir in the air, one of those tangible things tasted but not touched. They moved infinitesimally closer, and my heart rips at the edges at watching their two selves convalesce and meld into one, because I don’t think I’ll have that ever again. Not with all that’s happened.

But I push it away. I’ve learned to push away, breathing it out so it doesn’t fill me with lead; hold me down until every visible misgiving of mine shows. Each time I shove, it gets a little easier, this subtle superpower of mine.

“And this morning…this morning it was bad. ‘My God. She looks- beautiful. Doesn’t she, Will?’” Will mimics his voice in falsetto, and even though I’m certainly not on speaking terms with Raphael, I wince.

“And I’m like, ‘Yeah. She does.’ So I take out the Noel sheet music, hoping he’ll get the hint, but no. NO. ‘Well, not that she doesn’t. Every day. Maybe if she wasn’t, it be easier, but looking at her…knowing I can’t have her…’ So I’m all ‘Yeah I get the point, she’s hot. But Carey’s gonna be here any second, so why don’t you just stop babbling.’”

“’HOT?!” he imitates in such an indignant tone, even Harper cringes, “ ‘My God, how can you say that? She is BEYOND hot. She is…she is…there’s no words. Wait…YOU don’t like her…do you?’” At this point, he lowers his voice, in an unbelievably guilty dissonance, so like Raphael when he came to apologize, so fragile and volatile…I can clearly see the two of them talking this morning in my head, the lips moving that I didn’t have the heart to read…

“‘No. NO. I do not…Jesus. Why would you accuse me of that?’ ‘I’m sorry. But you have to agree- ’ ‘Yeah, dude, I know, she’s something else, but you really need to get over her.’ ‘I KNOW. Okay, Will? Of course I know that. It’s just…’ ‘PLEASE, Ray! Shut UP!’ End scene. I mean, honestly, guys. It’s bad.”

What happened to my control? I’m shaking, shivering, practically, like I’m standing outside on the frosted grass without a coat. In my dream, naked in the snow, and everyone slides away. No one can save me and I can’t save myself because I am so numb. So cold.

“I am sorry,” I whisper, and the fact that I’m uncharacteristically speaking softly is enough to make them both listen intently, concern drawn tight on their faces. “But…you don’t know how it happened…you don’t know…I’m sorry…I’m ruining your…you should just go out…I’m sorry I darken everything…I’ve tried not to…um…I have to-“

I don’t bother to finish my rambling, my throat tight and sharp on glass, but I can’t cry. I’m too cold to cry. I am raindrops sliding down a car window, I am the light blue flickering flame, I am a frozen flower, I am the wind caressing your cheek, I am the song you that imprints itself on your mind, but I am not happy, and I cannot. Cry. All I’ve ever wanted was to be a person, and I can’t do that. I can’t do that since I’m lost, and I can’t do that since I carry another inside me.

I run, because that’s all I know how to do. Not to the ladies’ or the roof, where Harper will know to find me. I run and I am so glad there are twenty minutes left and that Central Falls High has an open lunch, so glad that today is Halloween and that I’ve at least had practice masquerading.

***

My white slippers are clutched tightly in my hands, my bare feet freezing and feeling each little poke of the bark in this public playground. There are no kids, I guess, because it’s still school. An old woman sits on one of the benches, knitting.

I pick a swing and plop down, then proceed to pump my legs up and down, seriously doubting that Old Lady will really care about seeing my black lace panties.
I remember that I used to think that if I went high enough, my feet would touch the sky and I could jump of the swing, jump into the expanse like a rabbit in a cozy burrow.

My feet do seem to graze the grayness but I know I can’t leap my head and rest there. I would be all “I wish”, but I don’t even do that anymore. What’s the point?

“Cross your legs, dearie,” calls Old Lady, not even looking up from her knitting.

This makes me laugh, a deep laugh pulled from the well inside me, and my throat is finally not glass, but blissfully normal. I leap off the swing with my arms outstretched. My wings only carry me a few feet from the swing, and I come face to face with Granny.

Her hair, too, is tucked in a bandanna, vanilla yogurt hair curling out in wisps. Her face is a map of lines, showing a story untold. When she looks up at me, her eyes are a startling blue, laid down by heavy, wrinkled lids.
“Do you ever want to be a kid again?” I ask her, kicking my feet a little in the bark.

She smiles, and I see there in that smile a thousand suns. It looks so familiar, and I realize that was how I used to smile.

When was the last time I did?

“All the time.”

I shrug and nod, like I knew this already, which I guess I did. I just wanted to confirm it.

“Do you ever…not?”

“All the time.”

Inexplicably, I start shaking again, voices echoing: “Your words, Nadya, are also pretty damn loud”… “You have no idea”… “Bigger than these walls”… “Looking at her, knowing I can’t have her”… “You make it awfully hard to love you, sometimes”… “You’re a brave, exceptional girl, Nadya, and if you don’t know it yet, you’re an idiot.”… “It is with God that I found you”… “My daughter is the gutsiest gal there ever was!”…

All pieces to a path, but I have no idea where it leads to, what it means. Does taking the road less traveled automatically mean coming up with a dead end?

“What’s wrong, child?”

“I’m scared. My friends…I don’t know when I’ll be able to be with them. I don’t know if I matter enough to them to stay. “

I don’t know why she understands me without us going through the usual rote formalities of “How are you?” “Oh, I’m good.” “Good,” then uncomfortable silence.

“Listen to your heart,” she says simply, wisely. “The people that matter most to you will be there for you. If you can’t see them, lean in closer.”

I wait a beat, then ask, “What are you knitting?”

She laughs, needles clacking together.

“Oh, who knows? I think it matters more that I am than what I’ll end up with, don’t you?”

***

Spinning my lock to get to my binder, a hot breath touches my neck.

“I saw it.”

I whirl around. Meg stands behind me, hands crossed tightly over her chest, her Choir Girls behind her, along with a retinue of observers, peeking in, wanting to watch the hunt. Wanting to see me, the saucy, temperamental, mysterious holds-her-head-high girl, go down like a deer.

“Saw what?”

“My Mom is a secretary at the hospital,” she says more loudly, projecting her voice, announcing it in a game-show voice.

“Your PREGNANT,” she yells, an evil gleam in her eye.

“Pregnant?” sneers Melanie. “God. What a whore.”

Everyone snickers, the guys especially. One, who sits behind me in Science- Peter, I think, who’s always asking me for help on the vocab., saying thank you every time- says, “Woah. Who’s the father?”

“Raphael, of course,” Jen twitters, hands under her chin, steeple-style.

“What a guy! How’d he manage to get into the ice queen bitch’s pants?!” exclaims Heath, grinning.

Wolf-whistles emerge. Bile rises in my throat.

“Guess you’re not so cold now, huh?” taunts one of his friends, a tall guy with a shock of red hair and bulging biceps. “Why don’t you show us some of what you showed him?” He saunters towards me and snaps the back of my bra. It stings, but my eyes sting more.

“Ow-ow- OOOWW!!” yell the guys, the girls laughing, as he gropes one of my boobs, then steps away, like it was nothing at all.

“Why are you doing this?” I hear my voice ask. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Ooooh, does the slut have a question?” Jen simpers.

That is the final blow.

Arms wrap around me, and I close my eyes. I will kick if I have to, I will fight as hard as I fought with Alex before someone, anyone, a teacher, notices. I will fight to the death.

“Get the hell away from her,” commands Raphael, with all the spirit of an avenging angel.

“Wooa-oh, Daddy-oh!”

It’s the redhead.

“Yeah, I can tell what you see in her. I felt them. The chick’s chest is HUGE. But, I mean, knocking her up? Bad move, bro.”

The arms release me, but I am still safe.

Raphael throws the first punch.

***

I dab his eye with my dampened bandanna as we wait outside the principals’ office.

“You know, I CAN take care of myself,” I inform him, not really indignantly, more matter-of-factly.

“I know. But…you do it all the time. I thought I would give you a break. Just for once.”

He traces my face, from my forehead to my chin, in awe.

A part of me wants to close my eyes, let him in. But I nudge it expertly to the side, remembering what’s best for my baby, and what’s best for me.

“Raphael…stop. I don’t need a boyfriend.”

Sadly, he takes heed, retracting his fingers and curling them up into a fist, setting them gently on his lap.

“I can do that. I’ll be whatever you need me to be. I’ll be your friend, whatever.”

“No, it’s not even that…though you can be my friend…it’s more that I just want you to be THERE.”

“I will be.”

I nod cautiously.

“I hope so. Don’t make me regret giving you a second chance.”

With that, I continue to dab, now at the split above his lip.

“Nadya?”

“Yeah?”

“I think the reason I was most angry that they hurt you…was because I knew that I had, too.”

I choose my words carefully, pulling them out so I can get to the core of my meaning and not muddy it up with incompetence, without a trace of doubt.

“I think…that our friends hurt us more than our enemies.”

“I think…that you’re amazing.”

“I think…that we should stop saying what we think and shut up.”

And we do, letting silence show one of its many sides and wrap a warm blanket of ease and comfort around us.